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Driving document compliance with Capital Style Manager

The differences in documentation standards for electrical design are as vast as the number of stars in the sky. No two are alike, no matter what the claims – there is always “something” different. If your company provides documentation to more than one customer then the problem is even greater. The problem lies with the tools being used to create the drawings. Typically I see companies trying to use drafting tools to document complex electrical models – whether these are wiring diagrams defining electrical connectivity between devices or documentation of harness cables that route signals from one point to the next.

Enter Capital Harness Systems (CHS) and Capital Style Manager (Styling). One of the many benefits of CHS is in its model of your data the “Style” of the drawing has been separated from content of the drawing. What this is implies is that you can create your documentation without regard to aligning text left or right, without regard for the color or pixel widths of objects – and just get on with your design while Styling takes care of the rest for you. For those of you who must send the same or very similar electrical models (again, here model is a wiring diagram or harness cable drawing) to multiple customers you need only draw the content once and then apply Styling to the model before shipping it out – everything will snap into place based on the definition of the style. Lets take a look at some simple examples.

Capital Style Manager

Here we have a very simple style. Styling controls everything from the color and widths of the lines to the placement of the attributes and properties and even which properties will be displayed.

Here we have exactly the same data, but the style is completely different. I have created a nonsensical style simply for effect.

Capital Style Manager

Everything from the alignment of text to the fonts and everything in between can be controlled. As can be seen here we have the same data but with a different style applied.

Using Capital Style Manager your designers and engineers can focus on the engineering behind the model not what the model looks like – no matter how they draw the diagrams Styling can clean up after them. You can also output your data to multiple customers using different style sets for each customer without having to risk having accidental errors or differences between them.

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About Michael Stamper

I work for Mentor Graphics as an Applications Engineering Consultant working with the Capital Harness Systems tools focusing on Miltary and Aerospace markets.
I have a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineer from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield Michigan. I recently completed a Master's of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Michigan while working full time at Mentor Graphics.
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